


Despite the Abundance of It

by filia_noctis



Series: Mahabharat Ficlets: The Thirty Word Prompts Challenge [3]
Category: Mahabharata - Vyasa
Genre: Double Drabble, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-15
Updated: 2015-09-15
Packaged: 2018-04-20 22:17:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4804268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/filia_noctis/pseuds/filia_noctis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Draupadi reflecting on Bheem and herself.</p><p>(For the prompt: "Grateful")</p>
            </blockquote>





	Despite the Abundance of It

**Author's Note:**

  * For [toujours_nigel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/toujours_nigel/gifts).



There is a fierce affection in what they have built, she feels, though Yudhisthir can only see rash abandonment while Arjun drowns himself further in self-loathing failure (such insecurities her lover has!).  The other two show the quiet astuteness that gets overshadowed in their rather inconsequential obedience to the elders, and tolerate them in quaking, quiet appreciation.

This particular marriage of hers, with its whims and enraged ravings, is honest in ways that only bewilder and terrify the rest, and strangely aggrieve Arjun. Shared knowledges of bodies, earned through blissful, obscure stretches of quiet years while Yudhishthir gloriously reigned, and Arjun stayed a celibate, pass muster. They also happen to share decades’ worth of her instinctive claim on his fiercely indulgent, enraged, affectionate generousity. They are matched in ways she is reminded vaguely of Krishna. Something more is due to the affectionate loyalty of an old friend and lover, she thinks, than the vacuously glorified melodrama of virtue. From him she gets the most, and is the most free of burdens of obligation.

Let this marriage of hers sate itself through golden, deadly flowers, and balls of flesh that used to be violating hosts.

Neither of them ever thinks ‘gratitude’.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Richard Siken's book of poems "Crush".


End file.
